Jonathon Kvanvig, ed. Oxford Studies in the Philosophy of Religion, vol. 1(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), viii +254 Pps., $100.00; and Charles M. Wood, The Question of Providence (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2008), xiii + 120 Pps., $19.95.
Perspectives on providence abound in the twenty-first century, no less than in previous centuries. Often the debates are nuanced, covering topics that one would not ordinarily expect to be subsumed under the heading of ‘providence’, per se, yet in the final analysis, the issues debated dovetail into what a broad definition of providence might be expected to cover. As this review of two recent books will show, one broadly covering topics in the philosophy of religion, and the other covering the specific designation of providence, the current milieu offers one multiple ways with which to approach this vexing subject matter. In what follows, key themes from these two recent titles shall be highlighted in an attempt to gain a survey of current options on this ancient subject.
Jonathan L. Kvanvig is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Baylor University. Broadly, his research areas include metaphysics and epistemology as well as the philosophy of religion. He has recently published books on similar themes, including The Knowability Paradox (OUP, 2006) and The Problem of Hell (OUP, 1994). In this title, he edits the first installment of a new annual volume, Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion, that seeks to publish exemplary papers in a particular area of philosophy of religion. In this volume, he gathers eleven essays which are broadly related to the area of divine providence, some of which will now be highlighted.
In the first chapter, “Presentism and Ockham’s Way Out,” Alicia Finch and Michael Rea argue that eternalists, those who think that past, present, and future objects literally exist, are able to adopt Ockham’s way out of fatalist arguments for the impossibility of free action, while presentists – those who think only the present exists – cannot. John Fischer argues in chapter two that Molinism, while it can be properly invoked to understand God’s providence over the world, it cannot be called upon to adjudicate between issues related to the interface of God’s omniscience and human freedom. In fact, Molinists, he says, assume or presuppose the very thing under dispute – that is, that God’s foreknowledge is compatible with human freedom in the sense that requires freedom to do otherwise, and assumption that he finds to be unwarranted (27). Chapter six is an essay provided by Timothy O’Connor, entitled ‘Theism and the Scope of Contingency’. In it, O’Connor that if the thesis that contingent beings find the ultimate explanation for their existence in a maximally perfect necessary being who transcends the world, then the idea of contingent reality is broader than what current scientific theories posit. After considering the implications of the expansiveness of contingent reality, he then explains its significance to the problem of evil, concluding that there are good reasons for God to create a universe that permits (significant) suffering, even if the goods that require suffering are not the greatest goods imaginable (148).
Picking up again the idea of the problem of evil, Eleonore Stump addresses an often neglected aspect of it: the dashed and unfulfilled desires of an individual’s ‘heart’ – that is, of one’s will or mind. She concludes that traditional theodicies may be successfully modified to account for these dashed desires of one’s heart, but that the attempt to extend them to the problem dashed desire has not been done, a lacuna that her essay is an attempt to address (213–14). In what may be the best essay of the lot, Peter van Inwagen addressing what an Omniscient Being knows about the future (chapter ten). He argues for the viability of four postulates: 1) that God does not foreknow the future actions of free beings; 2) that God nevertheless knows everything about the future that is causally determined; 3) each human is able to reject God’s offer of salvation; and 4) God has only promised that some humans will be saved (230).
In the second book under review, Charles M. Wood acknowledges that the traditional doctrine of providence has fallen on hard times in the face of human suffering. Wood seeks to renew reflection on the doctrine of providence by reexamining its features in dialog with recent thinking on the subject, and reorienting the doctrine to cohere more fully with the Trinitarian and Christological commitments of the Christian faith. The book is composed of five tightly written chapters, the first of which identifies the question that providence seeks to answer, as well as delineating what a distinctively Christian answer to that question would look like. The second chapter is an exposition of William Sherlock’s Discourse Concerning Divine Providence (1694), a treatise that still impacts the discussion of providence some three centuries after its first publication. Chapter three considers the principles found within Sherlock’s text that may be profitable for the construction of an alternative vision of God’s engagement with the world and human lives. The remaining two chapters, four and five, are the more constructive ones in the book. Chapter four sets forth the Trinitarian ‘grammar’ of Wood’s answer to how God acts within the world. The fifth chapter concludes the title, suggesting some implication for doctrinal reconstruction in view of Wood’s reconstructed view of providence.
As these two titles show, the discussion regarding God’s involvement with the world – broadly considered to be providence – is alive and well. Although no major new ground has been broken in either of these two titles, I could see both to be used as supplemental texts in philosophy of religion courses at the graduate level.
Bradford McCall, Regent University, Virginia Beach, VA.